Class Balance Changes w/ Strong Support

Ah man…just look at these:
Necromancer improvements
Druid improvements
Anyway, for Druid I’d add change pathfinding for Twister and Tornado so these whirlwinds will fly more straight where you aim them. Also Arctic Blast requires some love.

I tried to main the Fire Elementalist Dudu, but without Enigma it was too slow compared to Sorc, so until I was able to get Jah and Ber I mained Sorc. Now that I can play with the Dudu as main - and even yesterday I managed to kill DClone with him - my personal opinion about the fire skills are these:

Mmmm for barbs i would replace stun with something like cleave (req 2 handed wep , hits enemies in front of the barb) . The absence of 2h builds for the barbarian makes me real sad

Leap attack aOE scaling from weapon damage

WW 2handed fpa back to a max of 4fpa (damm You blizz killing an already weak build). Now that slows affect ww fpa make it that we can use potions While ww… atm ww has all the drawbscks of other melee but can’t use a potion or proc on hit effects .

Heavy armor innate damage reduction % . This would at least put a reward for spending Many points into stre.

Increased stamina suks … add a flat +lífe per hard point .

5 Likes

Barb continue to improve whirlwind, uncouple double swing synergy and add it as direct scaling to the skill.

Pally just uncouple zeals synergy into the skill itself.

Sorc improve frozen orb, revisit cold shields.

Zon I’d still love pierce guided arrow, but for monsters only.

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As far as the Necro, specifically the Iron Golem, I’d be happy as a lark if they’d fix the Iron Golem disappearing bug. :confused:

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I’m not a fan of Shout boosting Attack Rating given that the Barbarian has Weapon Mastery and Combat Skills doing that already. Unless this is to encourage more group play, then that would be the only reasoning that makes sense. Keep in mind this also makes Ancients that much harder since Madwc casts it.

As for Grim Ward, your reasoning lacks logic. If you’re changing it to Taunt enemy monsters because its redundant with Howl by fearing them, how is your change not redundant with respect to the Taunt skill? My idea with Grim Ward is that it no longer requires a corpse, behaves like a Trap and expires after x seconds(duration impacted by skill level) and SLOWS enemies down(pocket Holy Freeze that would greatly help the Barbarian out in Combat situations).

I also thought about Increased Speed acting as a “passive” Skill IAS for Barbarians. I mean yes they can acquire Skill IAS via Frenzy but if you’re a 2-H Barbarian or Sword&Board, you can’t tap into it. If Increased Speed boosted Skill IAS(1% to 2.5% per level), it would greatly benefit ALL BARBARIANS, but most notably the 2-H/Sword&Board setups with respect to Whirlwind. It wouldn’t solve the issue of WW not hitting the old 4-Frame breakpoint but it would help immensely in countering Holy Freeze/Decrepify.

As for Sorceress, I’ve felt Thunderstorm’s radius of effect needs to be greatly expanded(at minimum of 13.3 yards to match Conviction aura but perhaps even basing it on Skill level). Furthermore, I’ve felt the skill should behave like Fist of Heavens and have a Nova Shockwave or Charged Bolts based on number of nearby enemies to emanate from the impact point, thereby giving it considerable AoE. If it’s a Nova shockwave, it’d synergize quite well with Nova build.

As for the Cold Armor spells, I agree and came to find Chilling Armor should synergize with Ice Bolt, Shiver Armor with Ice Blast/Glacial Spike and Frozen Armor with Frost Nova.

As for Frost Nova, I completely overhauled its synergies. Out goes Blizzard/F-Orb and in comes all three Cold Armor skills. The reason being that Frozen Nova requires that you get in very close so having a STRONG Cold Armor would be shrewd and having all three Armor spells as synergies means players can pick and choose which Armor spell to utilize.

2 Likes

Add update to Assassin martial arts charge up skills please.

I think most people agree on these:

  • charges never expire
  • increase their overall damage
  • remove next delay

Not sure if most people agrees on this:

  • charge ups skills always hit
  • remove finishers always hit when you have charges.
6 Likes

Hello no to double swing as a sinergy to WW .
Why , why do You all think that all barbs are dual wielding ? WTF i want to use 2handers ! Dumping 20 points into a sinergy wich i wouldnot even use and in some cases couldnt use (spear and poleaxe barbs) is another nail into the 2handed coffin…

Ww already Got wtfpwned for 2handers with a gigantic 20% damage nerf due to only reaching 5fpa instead of 4 fpa for every 2 hander NOT a sword … Wich brings me to : what’s the friggin love to swords??

I said improve ww, and uncouple double swing synergy. Two separate skill balances. I want double swing to direct scale damage rather than having to level bash as a synergy just for the skill to do damage. I said nothing about a synergy of any kind to ww.

I can see where my wording made it seem otherwise, sorry, but I was meaning two separate balances

The worst build in the game to level up is a physical bowazon. A barb using normal attack is way more powerful in levels 1-30. If you play physical bowazon, you pretty much have to use some sort of leveling build or cheese. Even if you’re a purist.

So with that in mind, Multi shot should start with 5 arrows, and gain 1 arrow every 4 levels until level 20. And after that 1 arrow every 2 levels.

Magic arrow should be a synergy for both strafe and guided arrow. In the case of strafe, magic arrow synergy replaces guided arrow synergy.

Magic arrow +damage should apply before %Enhanced Damage. Magic arrow and multishot should probably come with 100% enhanced damage too.

4 Likes

Not to worry about barbarian class, Blizzard probably saw some shortcomings of recent (2.4.3) changes to whirlwind. This time (in 2.5 patch) they will fix it properly to bring it to the right playing feel. They will increase the damage bonus by 1% per skill level and bring back 4fpa for two handed non-swords weapons. To retain the power ballance the whirlwind won’t be unninterruptible anymore…

I hope you are being sarcastic.

Hmm all support, gonna have a tough one to sell that :stuck_out_tongue:
All in all though, like most ideas.

Yep, easily needs love.

All yes please.

Warcry-yes
Shout-neutral atm, would need to dive in to give a real opinion, not my first choice for sure as barb can already gain good AR and can remove chunks of defense.
Concentrate, sure sounds good.
Iron Skin again sounds good.

Golem Mastery-might actually be to strong if the damage bonus is multiplicitive, possibly even without, but do like the idea itself.
Blood Golem-as now sure (when active summon), but with 6 of them (definitely managable with your Golem Mastery proposal) this would be to strong imo.
Fire Golem- Same as Blood Golem.
Raise Skeletal Mage-needs some loving indeed,
Poison Dagger-definitely needs loving, I presume I would also negate negative resistance not start at 0 no matter what (cause that would mean always -100 ofcourse).
If always acting as if 0 res, it would still be good, as there would never be immunes, however you nerf it vs non-immunes (-105% is quite managable even while wearing Treachery, in case you weren’t aware Venom boosts PD pretty hard, not sure on exact numbers anymore but even if only for Venom Treachery was better then Bramble, but Fade and 45ias are always welcome aswell :stuck_out_tongue: ).
Damage per sec the same as now? Because that part would make the 4 sec a nerf and while damage can get pretty good, this build would need CB to kill the really tough ones and be less effective when fully decked vs for example Baal then the current version.
Think I like the long duration version though.

Agree to all, except Thunderstorm, it needs a lot more than slightly in PvE, but might be unbalancing PvP (not a real PvP’er but iirc Thunderstorm was actually okay there).
Maybe a lightning doesn’t strike the same target twice mechanic (at least within certain time frame, like current frequency or something) and buff it’s frequency pretty good after that.

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Just has to be :stuck_out_tongue:
I think Blizzard will fix WW next patch though, likely somewhere in the line, we noticed WW underperforming so increased the effect of ias on it and we rolled a dice and it turned out were capping it at the sorceress attacks per second now.
This will let you reach maximum attacks per second a lot faster.
(then they laugh, congratulate each other on a job well done and ask the bartender for the next round of shots).

That was my thought making Shout more useful for group play while buffing AR for the entire party.

The Taunt skill targets a single monster, and my reasoning is Grim Ward would be changed to target all enemies within a small AoE.

The only problem with this topic is that you strictly talk about buffs, buff this buff that, but at what cost? We just gonna add a 1000% multiplier to hp, defenses, AR and damage and call it finished product?

I think if you were to add a buff to a skill, it has to even out on the other end, the whole “buff buff buff buff” idea is beyond control.

In my opinion I’d be more impressed if I saw stuff like;
Thunderstorm - Now has 10(+10 per level) charges per cast, frequency based on fcr and base damage reduced by 15%.
It would change the idea, while it stays the same, making it new and intuitive and maybe mattering more in the long run. Could even go so far as, while buffed it reduces nearby enemies attack rating by X amount.
Along with that then add:
Teleport - Now costs equal amount of health as mana and reduces defenses by 10% per cast each stack lasting 2 seconds.

We all think teleport is too powerful a tool to be used, the way we use it in diablo 2, this could give consequence of overspending.

I think a poison dagger rework would be more ideal, like;
“Poison Dagger - Now grants: 0,1 second reduced duration of poison afflicted by poison dagger per level, dealing XXX damage over 8 seconds, when killed, remaining poison damage spreads to nearby enemies”

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2 handed weapons need a buff. Anyone using them loses the shield slot, so anyone using them loses block and the stats from the shield, and they don’t do enough damage.

The same with heavy armor - they require massive strength which could have been spent on vit, they make you move slower, then just have a little more armor than the medium armors. They need a big boost of some kind as currently they are not worth the massive stremgth investment

4 Likes

I want Rabies to be useable on werebear, too; not just werewolf.

2 Likes